Better packaging for older hardware?

[M. Fioretti]

On Sat, Oct 18, 2003 05:51:05 at 05:51:05AM -0400, Alan Cox (alan at redhat.com) wrote:
> > As some of you may already know, the RULE project (see my signature)
> > works to make the latest stable release of Red Hat useable on very
> > low end hardware (i386+ 16 MB+ RAM, 3/400 MB hard disks).
> 
> Some of us know yes. Its what I used to install RH9 on a 486 with 24Mb of
> RAM 8)

Gee, great. If we were a company, you'd be receiving an offer for an
outrageously overpaid ad campaign RSN. Can we quote you on that?
On a more serious note, I'd really like to hear any direct feedback
from how you found RULE and its installer. Probably offline, no need
to fill the list with it.

> > 2) i386 kernel RPMs, possibly tweaked for low RAM.
> 
> 386/486 kernel RPMs make sense but you probably also want to think
> about that as a seperate kernel with less options selected and
> without the more high end tuning Red Hat has.

Absolutely. The problem is that we realize this would be a very good
thing, but, almost by definition, have not enough expertise,
bandwidth, and CPU power to investigate all the possible
alternatives.

Please have a look to the archives of the Linux Kernel Mailing List:
less than a week ago I started a thread there, called "unbloating the
kernel". I almost explicitly say there that few things would make me
happier (software wise, of course) if some real kernel hacker spends
some day explaining to us how to tweak for RULE scenarios the
*official* SRPMs of Red Hat, soon Fedora kernels.

We can walk (almost) alone after that, just need a very good initial
push in the right direction. Right .config, proper /proc settings,
whatever.

> > fedora RPMs to install (just as an example!!!) ONLY Kmail (or
> > sylpheed), Gnumeric or KOffice, Konqueror... without any other
> > applications and/or the most advanced/cool features of Gnome and
> > KDE. On plain X or Kdrive with only Qt / Gtk and a basic WM like Ice
> > or blackbox.
> 
> Stuff like Rox instead of nautilus etc you mnean ?
> 

Exactly. In user space the first problem is that lean and mean
applications receive less and less press, especially for those coming
to desktop Linux for the first time: they have to given the choice at
install time among:

"Full featured GNOME desktop, too big for your hard disk and RAM"
"Full featured KDE   desktop, too big for your hard disk and RAM"
"Dive head first for hours in an unknown foggy maze of dependencies
trying to get a leaner system"

Here we are pretty good, we just lack enough hours in the day...

The last (serious) problem in userspace is that even when you find a
seemingly light application, often it is built to pretend on disk a
tons of other libraries not needed by our users, so in the end it is
no light at all. This is what prompted my original request here.

Ciao,
	Marco Fioretti

-- 
Marco Fioretti                 m.fioretti, at the server inwind.it
Red Hat for low memory         http://www.rule-project.org/en/

None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom
but license.                                               John Milton